


Hell hath no fury

by hitomishiga



Category: Six - Marlow/Moss
Genre: Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Gen, It’s cyberpunk so you know minor references to:, Potential Romance, Sexual Themes, Transhumanism, Violence, and copious amounts of ignoring basic biology computers and engineering, drugs / alcohol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:21:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,788
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28241577
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitomishiga/pseuds/hitomishiga
Summary: In Neo London, only a few things stand in Tudor Inc.’s way. Six of them, in fact. Six elusive cyber hackers and master infiltrators intent on cashing in a shared grudge and enacting revenge.Queens by day, shadows by night - they are the Cyber Six.Henry won’t know what hit him.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 9





	Hell hath no fury

**Author's Note:**

> I haven’t written fanfic since about 2017 at best, so here we gooo!!

In the home stretch of the night, a motorcycle parks under the shelter of a dying billboard. It displays a loop of holo-images on its staticy and slightly cracked screen. For the moment, it lands on a familiar advertisement, displaying six figures in resplendent colours, before switching to something more banal - a soda, or something.

The rider looks around to make sure she isn’t being followed, and brings her wrist to her eyes. A tiny implant glows back at her, indicating the time (2:59) and today’s password. She waits for the hour to tick over, and today’s  _ real _ password is sent to her communicator. She reads it and sighs. 

The rider lifts herself off her bike and walks it over to the garage, where she enters a pre-loaded credit chip and locks it away for the night with a five digit PIN. With that safely done, she pockets her chip within her leather jacket and takes off her helmet, revealing a woman with a surprisingly youthful face and lengthy curls that spill around her collar and stick to her forehead. Her eyes, a natural brown, flicker down the deserted alleyway for the briefest of moments before she settles into pace in the space between a hostel and a recently-bankrupt recording studio. She counts her steps, turns to the left, and presses her hand against the wall.

“... Every rose has its thorns.” She says to the empty air. There’s a silence, then a shuffling, and then;

“What’s a rose to a king?” Says a voice on the other side. The woman sighs again and rubs her nose, but the voice on the other side presses again. 

“Do I have to?”

“It’s protocol.”

“You know it’s me, Anne.”

“What’s a rose to a king?” The voice, Anne, repeats one last time, and the woman mutters something under her breath. 

“... a sexy guillotine.”

“Nice.”

The wall itself peels apart, a secret mechanism unlocking and allowing entrance. A rickety looking staircase descends down, underneath the old old recording studio and into an inky, stale darkness. 

“You know,” says the woman to the air, “that answer doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

The door closes automatically behind her as she descends, and another set of footsteps quickly falls into step beside her. “That’s kinda the point, innit? Keep ‘em on their toes and all that.”

“You could at least try and make it not something completely random. It’s so obvious when it’s you on door duty.”

Anne scoffs. “I could say the same to you, Cathy Miss I-quote-Dickens-to-substitute-a-personality Parr.” She accentuates each word with a prod to the ribs that Cathy deftly shrugs away. 

“And yet  _ you’re _ the only one who even knows what I’m quoting to begin with.” She shoots back. Anne stops long enough for Cathy to gain a few footsteps.

“Touché.”

The silence falls easy after that. It used to come hard, like razors, between them. Cathy isn’t entirely sure things have “worked out” like Jane seems so adamant to insist, but at the very least, things are  _ comfortable _ . Which is more than Cathy can say about most things. 

Most people.

As they move away from the door, they move into the light, and Cathy becomes aware of just  _ how much _ of this is muscle memory by now - how many times has she descended this staircase, in the dark, her regular, unenhanced vision barely able to make out the outline of her feet and the irregular stairs below? Anne’s profile finally comes back into focus as well; shorter, fairer, more youthful but not  _ younger _ , her green eyes glowing and piercing under the half-light. They swivel to Cathy and she can  _ see _ them adjusting to the light, analysing her vitals, no doubt. 

As useful as it is, she wishes the Cyber wouldn’t read her so openly like that. 

“Did you fall off your bike?”

Cathy flushes. “...it’s Anna’s,” she says, not denying it. Anne just cackles like a witch, like she already knows everything, which is frustrating on so many levels Cathy doesn’t know where to begin. Still, when Anne reaches up and brushes some (apparent) dust from her shoulder, she simply offers a small toothless smile and continues on. 

They come to another door, this one a little more obvious than the last. Old-school, of course, because nothing about their little group is particularly cutting-edge new - Cathy can hear the winches and gears beginning to seize up as they open with Anne’s optic scan. It pulls apart like a toothy maw, of gunmetal grey and faded yellow warning stripes. 

Catalina is already at the table when they arrive. Of course. She was probably first to arrive after the memo went out. 

(Anne, of course, doesn’t count, because she is motivated by spite or powerjacks 100% of the time, and if she was here first it was either to spite Catalina, or because she never left)

“Catalina.” Cathy says, with a nod. This woman is her namesake, although by choice rather than heritage. Catalina nods back and smiles grimly.

“Cathy,” she says, “you’re running a little late.”

“I’ll explain in a bit,” Cathy replies, rubbing her eyes. They feel bruised from staring at a screen all night. The toothed door closes behind them, letting the faded light of the room filter through unimpeded. It’s this piss-yellow sort of light, something that Cathy thinks interrogators might have used in interrogation rooms to make it feel especially dry and sterile. Just being here makes her throat itch. She also supposed that is the reason everyone avoids the main room as much as possible, until it’s inevitable. 

“Queens!” Calls Anne, and from the woodwork, they appear like termites in a slow trickle from the adjacent hallways.

Anna is first, not-quite punctual but not-quite late as always, and Cathy gets the impression that she just runs off her own clock. So plain, so unassuming, no cybernetics or biojacks in sight, though one would be stupid to underestimate her. She is, Cathy hazards a guess, on her third or fourth drink of the night and still sober. The first thing she does is raise her brow at Cathy:  _ Is my bike ok? _ To which Cathy responds in kind:  _ She’s fine, safe and sound. _ Anna nods and sits down right as Jane arrives with a swish of skirts and a fuss.

Jane Seymour, so named after the ancient Tudor Queens they all imitate, is a quiet contradiction as she takes her place between Anna and Catalina. Cathy watches as she pauses, glancing at Anne with a stony expression, before sitting demurely, schooling her face into a small smile so fragile Cathy was scared it would shatter to a million pieces like glass. They make eye contact. Jane frowns and stares at her perfect, bio-modded hands.

Kat is next, of course, about five minutes later with a towel in her hair and a stubborn pout glued to her face. Her eyes and nails are bright, vibrant pink, that glow and pulse a little in the dull light, tracing down cybernetics across her face and arms. Her surgeries weren’t as clean and hideable as Anne’s. Cathy supposes that maybe drawing attention to her body is Kat’s way of rebelling against it. 

Lastly, is Joan. The hacker of the team looks like she just woke up - Cathy almost feels bad for disrupting her apparently normal sleep schedule, but she’s become too accustomed to the night sky, herself.

“And co.,” Anne adds cheekily upon seeing Joan’s arrival. Joan just permits a rude gesture back and unplugs the datajack from her temple. Always at work, that one.

“Goodness, Joan,” says Jane, steadfastly ignoring Anne, “did you sleep here all night?”

“And all day,” says Joan. “My landlord got sent to prison or something and the new guy cut a whole bunch out ‘cos we weren’t making  _ enough _ for him.”

“That sucks,” says Kat sympathetically.

“Figured this place is as good as any to crash, since it is technically, y’know, mine.”

Catalina drums her fingers on the table. “We’ll find a new place. We definitely can’t afford to compromise this location now, of all times, so minimise the amount of times you need to leave.”

“ _ Yes _ , yeah, Maria already told me this one. I swear, sometimes, you two…”

“You could stay with me, Joan,” says Anna, pouring herself another glass of what Cathy assumes is incredibly potent alcohol, though she’s never been brave enough to try. 

“And deal with your paparazzi-two-jacuzzi-million-dollar mansion?” Joan laughs. “No thanks, I’ll risk it here.”

Anne leans on the heel of her palm. “I dunno, two jacuzzis sounds pretty nice.”

“It’s not like you’re  _ not _ living a life of comfort yourself, Anne,” says Cathy quietly, but not so quietly that the rest of the group can’t hear. Catalina, in particular, snickers in response. And it’s true. The Queens have a lot of funding from a lot of places, even just from marketing alone.

Cathy doesn’t like to think too much about the dirty money. She traces the creases of her palm, tuning out the conversation in lieu of her thoughts. Tudor Inc. Simultaneously their worst enemy, and best friend. If Henry only knew…

“Yo, Six,” says Anne, and the use of her codename snaps her out of her trance. Cathy gives a thin smile. 

“Sorry-“ Cathy shakes her head, “it’s been a long night.”

“Amen to that,” Kat mumbles quietly, to which Anne responds with a solemn,  _ ‘Amen’ _ .

Jane, poor Jane, who looks like she’s constantly toeing against the line of blind hysteria at all times, turns quietly to Cathy and says, “You called this meeting? What’s going on?”

Cathy takes a deep breath, palms face down on the table. Even Kat stops fiddling with her hair to hear what she has to say next:

“Jane, I think I found where they’re keeping your son,” she says, “but you’re not going to like where .”

”Where? Cathy?”

“Tudor Manor.”

The silence blanketing the women becomes stifling, a weight rather than a security. Everyone gives Jane a brief, poorly hidden look of concern. Cathy finds herself observing how Catalina’s breath comes in short for a moment, or Anne’s nostrils flare, or Kat’s cybernetics glow just that bit brighter. Only Anna and Jane seem calm at this news, though everyone knows one of them is more genuinely composed than the other. 

The unspoken question hangs above them.

”It’s about time I revisited the place,” says Jane, and though her words are still as stone, Cathy can’t help but shudder at the veneer, so thin and getting thinner with every friction. The others put down what they’re holding, each with a glint of something dangerous behind their eyes. A silent pact. A wordless agreement.

”I _want to see my son_.”

**Author's Note:**

> if this continues, I may explain some of the worldbuilding and such here. or I may not. who knows. not i!!!
> 
> I can’t explain why I’m so obsessed w this musical, I normally steer so clear from rpf it’s not funny. smth abt the tantalising metaphysical and philosophical boundaries put forward by the concept of the musical itself makes me just wanna
> 
> anyway no, they’re not reincarnated or anything in this one. just named themselves after historical figures, which is a thing people totally do in cyberpunk genres, right


End file.
